Comments on: WoW vs. Glider Court Documents

by: wowpanda

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:07:07 +0000

This is to Andrew Crystall, no the mods will not disappear if Glider lost, it is human nature to make machines and let them do the dummy work. Without Glider there will be others to fill in the blank, I got my bot out in less then a month, and I am sure other engineers (most of the good programmers I know plays some game) will do that if they fell the time constraint.

by: D. Lamb

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 07:39:54 +0000

WoWglider is simply not human. Everyone who claims that WoWGlider acts in just the way a human does needs to pickup C++ for dummys or what memory reading is. WoWGlider just like there other program (Kick Ass Map) allows the bot to understand where monsters are at a greater distants then players can see. Simply put WoWglider doesn’t view the screen with any form of “Human Eyes”. It looks into memory to see a debuff, a monster, ect. I have made bots for many games in my life (Without memory reading techquies though they are fun and make the bots much easier to program and powerful) so yes I’m biest BUT!. I’m not saying WoWGlider is wrong. Its just does not act as a human. A human acting bot would atleast use screen scraping to find monsters and items not memory read. Thus you would program “Eyes” into your bot.

by: The Arcadia

Sat, 12 May 2007 07:36:02 +0000

I’ll get to the point in a minute:
I have never played WoW, because I have never believed in spending money to get a game that I then have to continue to spend money on to play. However, I did play Blizzard’s extremely popular Diablo 2 online for quite some time, roughly, until the 1.10 patch emerged and they changed the game forever, making it virtually impossible for the weekend warrior to get anywhere. Even before this however, there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands of bots operating on their servers. I *knew* people IRL that ran bots, they were that common. And what I discovered is that first, in any community there will be a market that fluctuates with the varying needs of the community. Secondly, bots destroy this economy. One of the more rare items in the game (SoJ, anyone?) was at first something to be bought only through much time and saving and hoping that someone would sell. But eventually SoJs were so commonplace that they had become the new currency. Hacks and farming bots brought this about. One of my saddest days playing that game (second only to the debut of the 1.10 patch) was after I had played and saved and traded and bought, until I had nearly all the ultimate items for a single character, and then Blizzard did a massive wipe of all fake items and known bots and hack programs, and I lost nearly everything I had, because everything I had traded for was hacked, and just drifted though the market until it came to me. Why was I penalized for playing honestly? I never bought items on ebay. I never payed real money for any in-game benefits. Yes, I chose to participate in the in-game community in which there were risks, but for a (part of the) game that is designed to be multi-player, participation in the community is nearly mandatory. My point is that in my opinion: 1. A bot is a type of hack. 2. The use of hacks affects those who use them and those who do not. 3. The creation of a hack that is then distributed to the public disrupts game play for those who deliberately play without hacks as the game is designed to be played.
Is the third party responsible for the public disruption? In the state of Illinois it is illegal to set off fireworks without proper authorization. You cannot buy anything more than smoke bombs in Illinois, because anything more than smoke bombs in Illinois cannot be sold. But you can buy them in Missouri, and people routinely buy fireworks in Missouri and then set them off in Illinois. You get busted for selling in Illinois, you get busted for making boom-boom in Illinois (if you get caught). Perhaps what we need here is a combination of both busting the seller/maker and busting the user. Or maybe, Blizzard could just incorporate the hack into the program itself. Now *everyone* can farm while they are asleep. Except me. I don’t play WoW. -_-’

by: Andrew Crystall

Thu, 10 May 2007 17:26:06 +0000

Syn, or you can design a game economy which is not so blatantly simple that a few, simple minded, bots can seriously disrupt it. I’d commend Eve Online to you for that - most of the issues there have been because of exploits relating to player activity and complexes (Eve dungeons). Eve’s inflation has nothing to do with Bots and everything to do with CCP’s deliberate design choices (strange but true..never figured that one out).

Anyway, again, Blizzard have already demonstrated in a harder case than this their points, so they will probably succeed in this. And several major mods have already been abandoned, because while they’re not in the line of fire now, Blizzard won’t give indemnities. The next time the patch breaks mods, a lot of quite popular ones are going to vanish.

And y’know what? They’re right.

by: Syn

Thu, 10 May 2007 17:16:18 +0000

I see all of you bickering one way or the other and some of you just making comments about this and that. But if you look at it from this perspective you may see exactly why WoWGlider is a problem - You have a bot that allows people to have the game running collecting items and gold. In turn the economy in the game sky rockets and makes it to where if anyone wants anything good they need to do a couple of things.

1) Get the Program (which is $25.00)

2) Spends Hours Upon Hours Getting gold to purchase something that is outrageously priced.

3) pay someone money for gold that has already been farmed by the above bot.

4) Just give up and quite playing (which is inevitable)

Truth be told the bot ruines the game for more people than it helps. The game runs on an economy and some items are harder to get than others. I feel Blizzard has every right to try and close down WoWGlider because it is making a product specifically for a game that it does not have rights to and selling it for use in that manner. Blizzard uses it own servers which we play on with the characters we create. If the bot isnt stopped what will end up happening? Economy in the game will sky rocket and prices will end up like they have on EQ where the only way you can get anything good is if you purchase the gold which is again against the ToA and EULA. Im all for shutting this guy down for making a program that will ruine gameplay for people who actually enjoy the game.

by: Wolfe

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:59:20 +0000

My possibly lacking sense for common sense says both deserve to lose. Blizzard should know that their design desicions will cause bots to emerge, and either redesign or cope with the effect on their own turf.

The bot makers should have to do combat with Blizzard in an arms race which Blizzard will win if they were to give it reasonable effort. Blizzard decided to go against the industry standards which makes “end game characters” infinately wealthy and the bots is the price they pay for their innovation.

Forcing hardcore players to play a game where time = power has bots as one of several deterministic consequences. Another interesting consequence (which surfaced when Naxxramas was introduced a few months ago) is that the elite group of players which dominate the development of the WoW culture suddenly turned from anti-RMT to Pro-RMT, as ingame currency suddenly became a needed resource for access the gameplay which gives you power to influence the culture.

In practice this means that large and powerful guilds which until Naxxramas frowned upon anyone who was sucky enough to buy gold on eBay now encouraged their own members to buy gold on eBay. The same argument can be made when replacing ‘buy gold’ with ‘WoWGlider’.

by: Andrew Crystall

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:10:50 +0000

PlayNoEvil, unless you subvert any DRM system. Like, oh, Warden.

Oops.

As I’ve said before, Blizzard have allready proven a case which was in many ways weaker than this. (BNetD)

by: Rivalyn

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:22:15 +0000

I don’t know but I honestly think that this would create more players for Blizzard than it causes them to lose. I mean their premise relies on the fact that someone’s supposedly going to go… ack that guy is botting to level his character instead of playing the game like me, I should quit! I’ve never encountered anyone examining the situation in such a fashion. Granted, I haven’t talked with a large percentage of the population, but amongst the many guilds I’ve been amongst, I can’t see that being the response to said situation.

On the other hand, you have a significant population that can’t play these games because of the time investment they require. Half the time I think that the reason there aren’t more “older” gamers is because games require such a large portion of your day if you want to remain competitive. Take a normal “raiding” guild in WoW… if you miss one day from level 1 to 60, you’re so far behind that trying to catch up is almost futile and then you miss out on doing everything with your friends.

Ultimately I think if WoWGlider was unofficially left alone, they’d gain more players than they’d lose through its use.

by: PlayNoEvil

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:50:50 +0000

Glider does not deprive Blizzard of a dime.

It does not stop World of Warcraft from operating.

Except for a technical violation of the Terms of Service, the application plays the game no different than any other grinder.

The only clear costs Blizzard inflicts are on itself for erratically banning people for using the product.

oh, and the lawsuit.

Conspiracy to subvert a EULA is far from a crime.

By the way, wouldn’t it be nice if Blizzard was held just a little bit accountable for building a game that a substantial number of players feel is so boring that players would rather have a program play it than play it themselves?

Oh, and this number MUST be substantial, if Blizzard is bothering to hunt MDY down.

by: Zen of Design»Blog Archive » A Rare Flurry of Linkworthy Blogtivity

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:40:38 +0000

[…] Matt Mihaly wants to talk about WoWGlider, and the recently released court documents. Your mileage may (and judging by previous Blizzard-supporting comments will) vary, of course but the thing that gets to me is that I feel like a lot of people who are jumping to Blizzard’s defense are doing so not out of principle but because they’re unable to detach emotionally from how much they personally dislike it when users run bots to play WoW (of course, Blizzard hasn’t sued the people actually running the bots and thus actually causing the alleged harm.). If Microsoft put something in a TOS/EULA that prohibited people from creating software to interact with Windows (without, say, paying them a license fee first) I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it’d be hard to find many internet users who would be backing MS. […]